End of era as Celtics rebuild without Pierce

FILE - From left are 2012 file photos showing NBA basketball players Kris Humphries, Kevin Garnett, Kris Joseph, Paul Pierce, Jason Terry and Gerald Wallace. The Brooklyn Nets will acquire Paul Pierce and Kevin Garnett from the Boston Celtics in a deal that was still developing as the NBA draft ended, according to a person with knowledge of the details. Yahoo Sports, which first reported the talks, said the Nets would also get veteran Jason Terry from Boston and send Gerald Wallace, Kris Joseph, the expiring deal of Kris Humphries and three future first-round picks to Boston. The trade can't be completed until July 10, after next season's salary cap is set, so pieces were still being discussed early Friday, June 28, 2013. (AP Photo/File)

FILE - From left are 2012 file photos showing NBA basketball players Kris Humphries, Kevin Garnett, Kris Joseph, Paul Pierce, Jason Terry and Gerald Wallace. The Brooklyn Nets will acquire Paul Pierce and Kevin Garnett from the Boston Celtics in a deal that was still developing as the NBA draft ended, according to a person with knowledge of the details. Yahoo Sports, which first reported the talks, said the Nets would also get veteran Jason Terry from Boston and send Gerald Wallace, Kris Joseph, the expiring deal of Kris Humphries and three future first-round picks to Boston. The trade can't be completed until July 10, after next season's salary cap is set, so pieces were still being discussed early Friday, June 28, 2013. (AP Photo/File)

Former Boston Celtics head coach Doc Rivers holds his new Los Angeles Clippers jersey during a press conference in Los Angeles on Wednesday, June 26, 2013. Rivers was introduced as the Clippers' new coach and senior vice president of basketball operations. (AP Photo/Nick Ut)

FILE - In this Nov. 18, 2012 file photo, Boston Celtics coach Doc Rivers gestures for a traveling call against the Detroit Pistons in the first half of an NBA basketball game in Auburn Hills, Mich. Rivers will be the next coach of the Los Angeles Clippers if the NBA approves the rare but not unprecedented trade of an active coach, a Boston Celtics official told The Associated Press on Sunday night, June 23, 2013. (AP Photo/Duane Burleson, File)

BOSTON (AP) ? Letting Doc Rivers go to the Los Angeles Clippers was the first sign. Getting rid of Paul Pierce and Kevin Garnett clinched it.

The Boston Celtics are rebuilding.

The Celtics have agreed to the terms of a deal that would send the two remaining members of the Big Three that won the 2008 NBA title to the Brooklyn Nets for a package of draft picks and players. Garnett is a future Hall of Famer, but it's Pierce's departure that signals the end of an era for the league's most-decorated franchise.

"It's sad to see everybody leave Boston. You just want them to go someplace where they have a chance to win, and they have," Rivers said at Clippers draft headquarters late Thursday night. "It's a great trade for Boston, too; not now, later. Danny wanted to rebuild, and that's what he's doing."

The longest-tenured member of the Celtics, Pierce is the team's captain, a 10-time All-Star and a likely Hall of Famer. He is the second-leading scorer in the history of the NBA's most-decorated franchise, and also is in the team's top seven in rebounds, assists, steals, games and minutes played.

Garnett is also a future Hall of Famer, though only the last six years of his career were in Boston. It's Pierce, who slipped to 10th in the 1998 draft and has been a Celtic ever since, who had a chance to spend his entire career with the franchise and add his name to a list that includes Hall of Famers Larry Bird, Bill Russell and John Havlicek.

(But not Bob Cousy, Robert Parish or even Red Auerbach.)

"(It's) sort of sad. You hate to see it," said Chicago Bulls coach Tom Thibodeau, who was an assistant on the Celtics 2008 championship team. "But that's the NBA. It's constant change, and you have to be ready to adapt. I think what Paul Pierce did for that franchise and Kevin ? I think's it's good for them. They have an opportunity to continue on.

"Good for the Celtics, where they can start their rebuilding."

Pierce was drafted in the Rick Pitino era when the Celtics, already in the midst of the longest championship drought in franchise history, were a year removed from the second-worst record in the NBA (a mark that was not good enough to land them the top prize in the draft, Tim Duncan).

He helped the team reach the Eastern Conference finals in 2002. But, convinced that they were not likely to go farther, Ainge was brought in the next year to tear things apart again.

Boston plummeted back into the NBA lottery and again bad luck prevented them from landing a franchise player like Kevin Durant. Instead, Ainge swung deals for Garnett and Allen that earned the Celtics their NBA-record 17th championship in the very first year.

But Garnett was injured the next year, and Kendrick Perkins went down in Game 6 of the finals in 2010, when the Celtics lost to the Los Angeles Lakers in seven games. Then came two eliminations by Miami and, after five straight division titles, a third-place finish and first-round loss to the New York Knicks.

Ainge was convinced that the time had come to start over.

Rivers' exit was negotiated with the Clippers, landing Boston a first-round draft choice in 2015 and freeing the Celtics from the $21 million remaining on his contract. Garnett and Pierce will go to Brooklyn as soon as the deal can be finalized on July 10.

Yahoo Sports, which first reported the talks, said the Nets would also get veteran Jason Terry from Boston and send Gerald Wallace, Kris Joseph, the expiring deal of Kris Humphries and first-round picks in 2014, 2016 and 2018 to the Celtics. Boston is left with Rajon Rondo, Jeff Green and Avery Bradley, along with Jared Sullinger and first-round draft pick Kelly Olynyk, a 7-footer from Gonzaga.

Tim Hardaway, a scout for the Miami Heat, said: "We don't have to worry about Boston no more."

Not next year, at least.

But the Celtics will have two first-round picks in four of the next five drafts, including the loaded one expected for next year.

"The Celtics wanted draft picks and they wanted to drop contracts. I was one of those contracts," Rivers said from California on Friday in an interview with CBS radio in Boston. "It's a hard thing to do, but I think it's the right thing to do."

___

Follow Jimmy Golen on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/jgolen

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/347875155d53465d95cec892aeb06419/Article_2013-06-28-BKN-Celtics-Pierce/id-3767d0d61970412fada2eac6d9c1e629

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The US Army Is Blocking Staff Access to the Guardian Website

After getting upset about the fact that Guardian has been breaking news and leaking classified documents about the many and varied spying programs of the NSA, the US Army has decided to block access to the news site among its employees.

Read more...

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/U1_gIZom700/the-us-army-is-blocking-staff-access-to-the-guardian-we-606626466

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Kerry plunges back into Mideast peace diplomacy

AMMAN, Jordan (AP) ? Secretary of State John Kerry plunged back into the decades-long Israeli-Palestinian conflict on Thursday, using Jordan as a base for talks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

It is Kerry's fifth visit to the region to try to restart peace talks that broke down in 2008.

He left Amman Thursday evening in a convoy of nearly a dozen vehicles for the roughly 90-minute drive to Jerusalem to dine with Netanyahu. A Jordanian military helicopter flew over his convoy during the trip. He is to have lunch with Abbas on Friday in Amman and more meetings could be in the offing.

U.S. State department officials say that while there are no scheduled plans for any three-way discussion during Kerry's trip, they are confident that both sides are open to negotiations, or at least sitting down together at the same table.

Kerry, they say, will continue to try to find common ground between the two sides that would lead to a re-launching of peace talks. On this trip, Kerry is trying to pin down precisely what conditions Abbas and Netanyahu have for restarting talks and perhaps discuss confidence-building measures.

Beyond that, Kerry wants to talk about the positive outcomes, such as enhanced economic growth, of a two-state solution. But at the same time, the secretary, who has long-time relationships with officials from both sides, will remind them of what's at stake if the conflict is left unresolved, they said.

Earlier this month, in a speech to the American Jewish Committee Global Forum in Washington, Kerry warned of serious consequences if no deal is reached.

"Think about what could happen next door," he told the Jewish audience. " The Palestinian Authority has committed itself to a policy of nonviolence. ... Up until recently, not one Israeli died from anything that happened from the West Bank until there was a settler killed about a month ago.

"But if that experiment is allowed to fail, ask yourselves: What will replace it? What will happen if the Palestinian economy implodes, if the Palestinian Security Forces dissolve, if the Palestinian Authority fails? ... The failure of the moderate Palestinian leadership could very well invite the rise of the very thing that we want to avoid: the same extremism in the West Bank that we have seen in Gaza or from southern Lebanon."

So far, there have been no public signals that the two sides are narrowing their differences.

Abbas has said he won't negotiate unless Israel stops building settlements on war-won lands or accepts its 1967 lines ? before the capture of the West Bank, Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem in a Mideast war that year ? as a starting point for border talks. The Palestinians claim all three areas for their future state.

Netanyahu has rejected the Palestinian demands, saying there should be no pre-conditions ? though his predecessor conducted talks on the basis of the pre-1967 lines, and the international community views the settlements as illegal or illegitimate.

Earlier on Thursday, Kerry talked about the crisis in Syria and the Mideast peace process over lunch with Jordan's King Abdullah II.

In a statement, the Royal Palace said Abdullah told Kerry that he will continue trying to bridge the gaps in the viewpoints of Palestinians and Israelis. But he warned that Israel's "unilateral actions, which include continuous Israeli trespassing on Christian and Muslim holy sites, undermine chances for peace."

On Wednesday, an Israeli planning committee gave the final approval for construction of dozens of new homes in a settlement in east Jerusalem. The announcement, which was made the day before Kerry's visit, appeared to be an Israeli snub at the secretary of state's latest round of Mideast diplomacy.

Officials traveling with Kerry sought to minimize the significance of the announcement, saying the U.S. has repeatedly said that continued construction of settlements were unhelpful to efforts to restart the talks. The settlements are part of the Har Homa area of east Jerusalem. The Obama administration said it was "deeply concerned" back in 2011 when an Israeli planning commission approved 930 new housing units in the Har Homa neighborhood.

The Palestinian side condemned the announcement.

"Such behavior proves that the Israeli government is determined to undermine Secretary Kerry's efforts at every level," said Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat.

___

Associated Press writer Jamal Halaby in Amman contributed to this report.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/kerry-plunges-back-mideast-peace-diplomacy-154841578.html

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AP PHOTOS: Images of the western US heat wave

By Dana Feldman LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Michael Jackson's nephew and co-guardian to his three children testified on Thursday in a wrongful death lawsuit filed by the late pop star's family that the "Thriller" singer was a humble family man who supported his family in times of need. T.J. Jackson, 34, the son of Jackson 5 member Tito Jackson, offered a view into the private life of the King of Pop, who died at age 50 in Los Angeles in 2009 from an overdose of surgical anesthetic propofol ahead of a run of London concerts. T.J. ...

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/ap-photos-images-western-us-heat-wave-083000457.html

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Co-Founder ?Who Made Numbers God? At Zynga Joins Bee Cave Games As Advisor/Investor

Ex-Zynga co-founder and godfather of metrics-based game development Eric Schiermeyer is now an investment and advisor to Bee Cave Games, makers play-money gambling Facebook game Blackjack Casino. Schiermeyer left Zynga a while back. Bee Cave Games CEO Erik Bethke tells me Schiermeyer's advisor gig is a weekly role and his investment is part of a forthcoming funding round in the low millions.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/0EvHVmPK-QA/

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Seesaw Science: The Hammer-Ruler Trick

Well balanced?: This tricky balancing act might look improbable, but with a little help from physics you will learn how it works. Image: George Retseck

• 

  We?ve long understood black holes to be the points at which the universe as we know it comes to an end. Often billions of times more massive than the Sun, they...

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Key Concepts
Physics
Center of mass
Fulcrum
Torque

Introduction
Ever wonder how balancing toys work? Simple toys that entertain by precariously balancing were popular in the Victorian era. These seemingly gravity-defying curiosities can rock back and forth at the edge of a table but remain relatively stable.

But how do they balance? The secret lies in a heavy but visually nondescript counterweight attached to the toy. Our eyes are drawn more immediately to the large, ornamental part of the toy that depicts a person or animal rocking back and forth on a tiny pivot point. On its own, this part of the toy looks unstable, which is precisely why such toys continue to be so intriguing?they make little intuitive sense; to an onlooker, it appears that the larger element should send the entire contraption off-balance.

For this fun experiment, you won't have to go searching for any century-old antique toys. All you'll need is a hammer, a ruler and a thick rubber band.

Background
An object's center of mass is a unique point where that object's mass is centered. For simple, symmetrical objects with equally distributed mass (such as a ruler), the center of mass lies in the object's geometric center (which would be just at the six-inch mark for a one-foot ruler).

For more irregularly shaped objects?such as a person on a bicycle?you might be more familiar with the term "center of gravity," which refers to a point on an object that's identified by averaging together all the gravitational forces acting on that object. Don't let this confuse you! For our purposes, it's fine to think of these two concepts as the same because Earth's gravity produces a relatively uniform downward pull on small objects near its surface. Think of it this way: If there's more mass in one region of an object than another (say, a person on top of a bike rather than the bike's wheels), then gravity applies more force to that region.

Let's apply this concept to two children sitting on opposite ends of a seesaw. They create a simple mechanical system consisting of a lever (the seesaw's plank), a fulcrum (the point about which the plank can tilt) and a couple of weights (the children). If the two children weigh the same, the system's center of mass is located in center of the seesaw's plank and directly above the fulcrum. Put a heavier child on one end of the seesaw, and you've shifted the system's center of mass away from the fulcrum. The greater torque (or force) that gravity applies to the more massive (and thus heavier) side of the system pulls the larger child to the ground while lifting the smaller child into the air.

Materials
? Hammer
? 12-inch ruler (plastic works, but wood is preferable)
? Thick rubber band
? String (optional)
? Tape (optional)

Procedure
? First, pick up your ruler and balance it lying lengthwise on your index finger. Try using the six-inch mark on your ruler as your balancing point?this is roughly the location of the ruler's center of mass, and you'll notice it's at the middle of the ruler. This is because our ruler is an object of uniform density and is shaped in such a way that it doesn't have a heavier or lighter end.
? Take your ruler and lay it flat on a table or desk. How many inches on the ruler can you nudge over the edge of the table before it falls off? Think about our hypothetical seesaw from earlier. You should find that once you nudge the ruler's center of mass over the table's edge (the fulcrum), gravity applies more torque to the more massive side of the system than the other, dragging it over the edge and onto the floor.
? Now, try to identify the center of mass on your hammer. If you hold your hammer lengthwise, can you balance it by placing your index finger beneath the point of the hammer located halfway along its length? Probably not! In fact, you should find that the hammer's head is much heavier than its handle. We can infer that the hammer's center of mass is located somewhere closer to its head.
? The goal now is to use our materials to build a new mechanical system with a center of mass located as close to the 0-inch tip of the ruler as possible. (Hint: our hammer will act as a counterweight.) Take another look at how classic Victorian balance toys are structured. Knowing what you've learned about where the hammer's center of mass is, where do you think the hammer is going to go when we build our new system?
? Loop your rubber band over your hammer so that it hangs somewhere near the middle. (Depending on how smooth the hammer handle is, you may want to affix the rubber band to the handle with tape. If your rubber band is too stretchy, you can use a loop of string approximately three inches in diameter instead).
? Loop the rubber band over your ruler. This end of the loop should hang near the 2-inch mark on the ruler. The end of the hammer's handle should intersect and form an acute angle with the ruler at around the 8-inch mark.
? Place the end of the ruler that starts with zero near the edge of the table. Does it balance? Try altering the position of the hammer's head relative to the tip of the ruler. With some careful adjustments, you can tweak the system so that its center of mass is located at the very tip of the ruler.
? Once you've gotten your system to balance, try nudging the 0-inch end of the ruler closer and closer to edge of the table. By doing so, you're moving the system's center of mass progressively closer to the fulcrum and, if you're careful, you can produce a dramatic effect by getting your system to balance on a mere sliver of the table's edge.
? Extra: If you want to create an even cooler visual effect and make your system look more like a Victorian balance toy, place a very light stuffed animal on the 12-inch end of the ruler. (A stuffed monkey that hangs onto the end of the ruler with clasped Velcro hands is a crowd favorite.)

Source: http://rss.sciam.com/~r/sciam/science-education/~3/_1MKF115yk0/article.cfm

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Dimitrov loses 5-setter; Robson reaches 3rd round

LONDON (AP) ? Grigor Dimitrov, considered one of the rising stars in tennis, was eliminated in the second round at Wimbledon on Friday in a five-set, rain-delayed match that lasted more than four hours over two days.

With girlfriend Maria Sharapova watching in the stands on Court 3, the 29th-seeded Bulgarian fell to 55th-ranked Slovenian Grega Zemlja 3-6, 7-6 (4), 3-6, 6-4, 11-9.

Zemlja hit a forehand passing shot on his sixth match point to become the first Slovenian to reach the third round at the All England Club.

Also, Britain's Laura Robson beat Colombia's Mariana Duque-Marino 6-4, 6-1 under the closed roof on Centre Court to reach the third round.

Dimitrov is known as "Baby Fed" for a style that resembles that of Roger Federer. But like Federer, who was stunned in the second round on Tuesday by Sergiy Stakhovsky, Dimitrov was out before the third round.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/dimitrov-loses-5-setter-robson-reaches-3rd-round-142308083.html

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Thales takes lead on 'dark explorer'

27 June 2013 Last updated at 11:45 ET By Jonathan Amos Science correspondent, BBC News, Toulouse

The European Space Agency (Esa) has appointed Thales Alenia Space (TAS) of Italy to lead the construction of its "dark explorer", Euclid.

The organisation's Industrial Policy Committee has approved the issuing of a contract worth 322m euros (?275m).

Euclid will launch in 2020 and look deep into the cosmos for clues to the nature of dark energy and dark matter.

These phenomena dominate the Universe, and yet scientists concede they know virtually nothing about them.

"Euclid will be so impressive; it will be a cosmologist's dream, and we are making it happen step by step," Prof Alvaro Gimenez, Esa's director of science, told BBC News.

The TAS contract, which will be signed in the coming weeks, completes the sourcing of the two major elements that make up Euclid.

A contract to build the payload module, which will hold the 1.2m telescope and two instruments, has already been awarded to Europe's other big space company, Astrium.

Its value, some 72m euros, will come out of the global sum that will now go to TAS as prime contractor.

Thales Alenia's job will be to direct the industrial project, constructing the spacecraft's basic structure and then integrating all other parts.

As is often the case with Esa science missions, the instruments will be delivered direct, and paid for, by individual member states.

Euclid will make its observations using a visible-light camera from the UK and a near-infrared camera/spectrometer from France.

The latter needs special detectors that will be acquired from a US specialist, Teledyne, at a cost of 40m euros.

"As you know, we will be paying for the development of the infrared detectors but it is Nasa who will pay for the flight models," said Prof Gimenez.

By picking up this bill, the US space agency is effectively buying positions in the Euclid science consortium for a number of American researchers.

Distorted view

Dark energy and dark matter are two of the most pressing problems in science.

Continue reading the main story

Dark energy and dark matter mysteries

• Gravity acting across vast distances does not seem to explain what astronomers see
• Galaxies, for example, should fly apart; some other mass must be there holding them together
• Astrophysicists have thus postulated "dark matter" - invisible to us but clearly acting on galactic scales
• At the greatest distances, the Universe's expansion is accelerating
• Thus we have also "dark energy" which acts to drive the expansion, in opposition to gravity
• The current theory holds that 68% of the Universe is dark energy, 27% is dark matter, and just 5% the kind of matter we know well

Together, they account for about 95% of the energy density in the cosmos, but researchers are nowhere near a description for either.

Dark energy is the name given to the "force" that appears to be driving the Universe apart at an accelerating rate.

Dark matter is the extra material that is unseen but which astronomers know to be there because of its gravitational effects on the matter we can observe. Galaxies, for example, could not hold their shape were it not for the presence of some additional "scaffolding".

Euclid will try to plot dark matter's distribution by looking for the subtle way its mass distorts the light coming from distant galaxies. It will do this over a third of the sky.

The mission will go after dark energy by mapping the three-dimensional distribution of galaxies. The patterns in the great voids that exist between these objects can be used as a kind of "yardstick" to measure the expansion through time.

Ground-based surveys have done this for small volumes of the sky; Euclid however will measure the precise positions of some two billion galaxies out to about 10 billion light-years from Earth.

And American involvement raises the prospect of an additional method being used to study dark energy. Many US scientists have used exploding stars, or supernovae, as the distance measure instead of galaxies. Euclid would be well equipped to try this approach also.

"It could happen. It would be a bonus, but first we intend to measure the galaxies to get at dark energy," Prof Gimenez told BBC News.

Euclid will launch on a Soyuz rocket and make its observations at a position about 1.5 million km from Earth.

Esa expects its total expenditure over the lifetime of the project to be just over 600m euros.

Jonathan.Amos-INTERNET@bbc.co.uk and follow me on Twitter: @BBCAmos

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-23076324#sa-ns_mchannel=rss&ns_source=PublicRSS20-sa

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Digg (for iPhone)

The latest update to the Digg iPhone app includes one huge new feature: Digg Reader. Digg Reader is the brand-new RSS feed reader from Digg that's still technically in beta, but shows a lot of early promise. The reader itself has a few limitations?you have to have a Google account, for example, and it doesn't support OPML uploads?but it's off to a decent start and looks great on the iPhone.

How to Get Digg Reader on iPhone
When you install the free Digg app from iTunes and launch it, tap the three horizontal lines in the upper left corner to open Digg Reader. You'll have to sign into a Google account to use Digg Reader. The app will request access to information from your Google account?a show-stopping privacy concern for some people?and you have to grant it access to use the RSS feed reader.

Digg then pulls in your Google Reader feeds and imports them pretty well, preserving folder organization in the process. Every time I launched the app, I had to sign into Google anew, which makes me worry about whether I will still be able to use Digg Reader after July 1 when Google Reader goes the way of the dodo.

In testing the Digg iPhone app and the included Digg Reader, Google Alerts did not actually work, appearing as empty feeds, even when I could see in Google Reader that my alerts were active. If you're in need of keeping your Google Alerts active, you can set them in Google to alert you via email after Google Reader closes. Or you can try Editors' Choice G2Reader, one of the only RSS feed readers I've tested that continued to update my Google Alerts, though more slowly than Google did.

Digg App Features
The main part of the Digg iPhone app doesn't contain much to write home about. In fact, it's very much downplayed the moment you start a Digg Reader account. In short, there's a home screen where popular Digg news stories display in a scrollable view. Stories appear with a headline and image, and a count showing how many "Diggs" (essentially "likes") a story received. You can open the story to read it, or swipe right to left across the story to access other functions, such as bookmarking it to read later, or sharing it via email, Facebook, Twitter, and so forth.

Left-to-right swipes, on the other hand, return you to Digg Reader, proving just how integral this feature is to the Digg now.

Design of Digg Reader
Digg Reader in the Digg iPhone app looks like most other RSS feed readers. You'll see a list of your feeds and folders in a column, with a few essential tools and features, such as "saved" stories, at the top.

Click a feed or folder from this panel, and it opens the list of items in that feed in the main window, hiding the RSS feed reading panel in the process. The display looks great, but you can't toggle between expanded versus minimal previews. Each entry has a headline in bold type with the name of the publication or blog below it, an image when available, and a time stamp showing how long ago the item appeared in your feed (e.g., "4h" indicates four hours ago). Often you'll see one to two lines of preview text from the post if it fits; when images are included, that preview text generally doesn't fit. Tap a post once, and it opens for further reading, which sometimes contains the complete text and other times only another preview. Tap again and you can open the full post in Digg's included browser.

Digg Reader definitely has a very functional look on the iPhone, and I think that's for the best due to the overwhelming amount of information you're probably subjecting yourself to through the feature. Simpler is definitely better here.

Some RSS fans will be thrilled to hear that Digg Reader also integrates with Pocket, Readability, and Instapaper, all services that make it easier to read long-form content in particular when offline. You can manage your connections to these services right from within the settings of the Digg iPhone app. It's totally appropriate, as those services are really designed to improve reading experiences on small devices, such as the iPhone.

Settings and More
When I explored Digg Reader's settings from the website digg.com/reader, I found a few instances of switches set to "public" rather than "private" by default, which pleases me none too much. There are two private/public switches for URLs that contain a feed of all the items from your account that you either save or digg. Ah ha. So, if you set these URLs to public, you can then let other RSS feed users get a stream of all the content you either "Digg" or save an item. That's kind of neat, but I wish there had been some explanation so I could determine whether and how I might use those capabilities?or whether I'd prefer to toggle them to private. iPhone users should be aware of these settings, too.

Other neat options in the settings didn't all seem to work just yet (remember, Digg Reader is technically in beta), but definitely piqued my interest. One lets you adjust the size of the text display (something that I presumed would be functional even during beta), and another section called "Experiments" that has an entry for "car mode." This feature wasn't functional at the time of my testing but purports to play any unplayed podcasts. I'm super curious, as I do a lot more audio "reading" of news and articles than visual reading.

Digg is Digg Reader
Let's not beat around the bush. The Digg iPhone appis the Digg Reader app for iPhone. The RSS feed reading component is so integral to the app that there's little reason to use it unless you sign into Digg Reader. If you're not one to give away access to your Google account so freely, this is not the app for you. Although it's in beta with some bugs expected for the time being, it's off to an interesting start. At present, Digg Reader is fully free, but the company has announced plans to rollout premium features for paying subscribers in the near future.

If you are not willing to use an RSS feed reading service that demands a connection to Google, pick G2Reader, one of our Editors' Choices. The other is Feedly, which also requires a Google account, and seems very similar to Digg Reader in many ways but has had more time to become truly stabile and reliable. That head-to-head comparison could change in the coming months, though, when Digg Reader rolls out its premium services. Stay tuned.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ziffdavis/pcmag/~3/S81BYUsQe6o/0,2817,2421196,00.asp

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Who Are You Calling Opaque?

Robert Hass

Photo by Chris Felver/Getty Images

Hi, Mark Edmundson, you big-time poetry troll. I am not sure where to start with you. You took to Harper?s this month to denounce contemporary American poets. You upbraided them for their ?inwardness and evasion,? their ?blander, more circumscribed mode,? and claimed that they cast ?unambitious spells.? You scolded them for playing ?small-time games? with ?low stakes,? timidly avoiding the words ?we? and ?our,? neglecting pop culture, and refusing to offer up a ?comprehensive vision,? a ?full-scale map of experience? encompassing politics, childhood, love, death, society, and nature. You scorched them in aggregate and you scorched them individually: W.S. Merwin is ?oblique, equivocal, painfully self-questioning.? John Ashbery ?says little.? Of Anne Carson: ?The title of a recent profile in the New York Times, ?The Inscrutable Brilliance of Anne Carson,? has it half right.? Jorie Graham is ?portentous,? Paul Muldoon ?opaque.? As for Adrienne Rich, ?the gift for artful expression is not hers.? You go after Sharon Olds, Mary Oliver, Charles Simic, Frank Bidart, Robert Pinsky, and Robert Hass, even the late James Merrill, all of whom deserve pages and pages of defense (and are likely getting it: I don?t even want to think about the contents of your inbox right now, Mark). Yes, your screed was a passionate piece of writing, dripping with erudition. You quoted great poets down through history: Dante, Milton, Emerson, Wordsworth, Yeats, Frost, Plath, Lowell. You did exactly what you want today?s poets to do, which is make a sweeping, fervent argument about something that matters. Unfortunately, you are completely out of your mind.

Even after poring over your 6,000-word essay, I?m still not exactly sure which themes you believe are appropriate for poetry?good verse apparently has to illuminate the world post-9/11, or describe the decline of the human race, or something. (At one point you praise Lowell for ?looking at the world as though from outer space, like a graying weary seer, and pronouncing judgment.? Not exactly the clearest marching orders.)?But I do know for sure that today?s poets are hardly limiting themselves to hermetic introspection (not that there?s anything wrong with that.) Nor are they avoiding overtly political content. A relatively recent New York Review of Books is lying on my desk. Let me open it up to the first poem I see: ?Green Absinthe,? by Frederick Seidel, which contains the lines: ?Bashar al-Assad (may his tribe increase!)/ Awoke one night from a deep dream of peace, / And saw, within the moonlight in his room, / The dead about to lead him to his doom.? Nope, not political at all. And farther down, an icy deployment of the same prophetic ?we? you argue has gone extinct: ?Something is coming more than we know how./ More than we know how. An asteroid. Soon.? You complain that poets these days only want to write about their own thought processes. I suppose you?re not interested in Sharon Olds on assisted suicide or Paul Muldoon on Obama or James Merrill on World War I or Natasha Tretheway on colonialism in the Americas. I suppose you don?t care that Louise Gluck?s latest book, A Village Life, is all about crafting a communal voice, capturing that strange collective pulse small towns know. So many lyrics out there bypass the personal, or use it to leapfrog into the abstract, that I?m unsure if you?re joking when you say that poets have given up on grand claims in order to cocoon themselves in lilting idiosyncrasy. Of course, you do admit that ?there?s no end of poetry being written and published out there: one can?t generalize about it all,? before, um, generalizing about all of it.

And then, Heaven help you, you go after Seamus Heaney. He is obscure and nostalgic. He hides a lack of conviction behind his admittedly distinctive voice. (He is also an Irishman in a takedown of American poetry, but whatever.) Voice, it turns out, is a bugbear for you. You think it has usurped the place of argument in the poetry of the day, that writers are all melody without myth, music without message. By way of example, you give us lines from Heaney?s ?Punishment?: ?I can feel the tug/ of the halter at the nape/ of her neck, the wind/ on her naked front.// It blows her nipples/ to amber beads,/ it shakes the frail rigging/ of her ribs.? This is what the absence of a transcendent theme sounds like? (Related: Do you hear the rip as a thousand poetry readers rend their clothes?) You cannot actually consider these stanzas devoid of subject matter. They?re the pounding of public humiliation mixed with private desire, a reluctant attraction to the darkness of old ritual, a weird Celtic drumbeat of empathy, disgust, and longing. Later, you hold up, as a counterpoint to Heaney, Yeats, a man who ?does not hedge.? But Yeats was a veritable king of ambivalence, a writer captivated equally by the costs and the enchantments of his homeland?s ?terrible beauty.? Cherry-picking a few lines from ?Easter 1916? doesn?t exempt WBY from the same criticisms you lob at Heaney, though it does demonstrate how self-questioning can lend a poem complexity, depth, even greatness.

That same New York Review of Books I just paged through to find Seidel includes an article about the thinker Albert O. Hirschman, who proposed that ?doubt could be a source not of paralysis and death but of creativity and self-renewal.? Hirschman decried the ?overproduction of opinionated opinion,? the profusion of grandiose and ideologically hubristic statements (say, in Harper?s magazine), from which poetry should be a refuge. And what if today?s poets are reluctant to pummel us with Truths About Our Condition? What if they do gaze inward, at least at first, in a way that is less ?justifying God?s ways to man? and more ?an inner persistence toward the source?? God is dead, anyway, or at least unshakeable truths are. A declamatory poetry may have worked well in Milton?s time, on the comet-tail of the Enlightenment, but these days ambition has to manifest itself differently.

How should it manifest? I can?t pretend to know, but I am delighted by the paradox, in poetry, that more fine-tuned detail produces more relatable and universal verse. That?s because poetry strives for flashes of recognition?connections between the consciousness on the page and the consciousness outside of it. It bridges subjectivities: A keenly observed thought or feeling, one bearing all the traces of a particular mind, nonetheless takes root in your mind. Words that feel palpably alive jolt you, the reader, to life. You could say, maybe, that poetic voice is the expression of a soul, and that souls have porous edges. Or you could say, as Robert Hass does in ?Meditation at Lagunitas? (a lyric roundly slammed by you, Mark), ?blackberry, blackberry, blackberry.? Hass at once parses the specific objects and adds them together, one, two, three, so that they form a bright totality, united by blackberry-ness. He makes an important claim about how the particular and the general, the individual and the communal, are interfused. But to you, Mark Edmundson, that claim is ?simply not good enough.?

You say such gestures ?don?t slake a reader?s thirst for meanings that pass beyond the experience of the individual poet and light up the world we hold in common.? But that is exactly what they do. The most personal poetry proves that we share a susceptibility to its music. Our ?great human truth? may be that we are all suggestible to one mind?s small flare of illumination, that the world populated by such vivid, numinous voices is the ?world we hold in common.?

But, you cry, ?poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world!? Auden?s tart rejoinder was that ?Poetry makes nothing happen.? (?It is a way of happening,? he adds, ?a mouth.?) Auden wanted to steer the art away from truth-claims and toward something more flexuous and subtle?a mode, not a message. For Auden, poetry unfolded in hypotheticals, in half-truths and possibilities, toggling between feeling and thought. You may find this subjunctive space wishy-washy and esoteric, but, in it, anything can occur. That is how poets become reformers and activists. That is how change starts. But if it?s not enough for you, if you are still intent on the ?legislators of the world,? then put down the anthology and turn on C-SPAN, you crazy person.

Source: http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2013/06/mark_edmundson_s_harper_s_poetry_takedown_it_s_wrong_contemporary_american.html

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Federer, Sharapova lose in wild day at Wimbledon

LONDON (AP) ? The day began, oddly enough, with word that Roger Federer's orange-soled shoes did not conform to Wimbledon's all-white dress code and would need to be replaced.

It ended, shockingly enough, with Federer losing in the second round at the All England Club, his earliest Grand Slam exit in a decade. It ended his record streak of reaching at least the quarterfinals in 36 consecutive major tournaments.

And in between? Oh, there was so much more to this unpredictable Wednesday, including four-time major champion Maria Sharapova's loss to a qualifier, and the injuries that forced seven players to leave because of withdrawals or mid-match retirements, believed to be the most in a single day at a Grand Slam tournament in the 45-year Open era.

In that group: second-seeded Victoria Azarenka; sixth-seeded Jo-Wilfried Tsonga; Steve Darcis, the man who stunned 12-time major champion Rafael Nadal in the first round; and 18th-seeded John Isner, who will forever be remembered for winning a 70-68 fifth set in the longest match ever, more than 11 hours. This time, Isner lasted all of 15 minutes, stopping in the third game after hurting his left knee.

Federer, Sharapova and Azarenka were three of seven players who have been ranked No. 1 that departed in a span of about 8? hours. They also were among 12 seeded players heading home.

Most remarkable of all, of course, was Federer's 6-7 (5), 7-6 (5), 7-5, 7-6 (5) loss to 116th-ranked Sergiy Stakhovsky in the day's last match on Centre Court. Federer hadn't been beaten this early at a Grand Slam tournament since the first round of the French Open on May 26, 2003, back before he owned a single trophy from any of the sport's most important sites.

Now his collection is 17 total, with seven from Wimbledon, including last year's.

"This is a setback, a disappointment, whatever you want to call it," Federer said. "Got to get over this one. Some haven't hurt this much, that's for sure."

In addition to the hard-to-believe results and the slew of injuries, there was all manner of sliding and tumbling on the revered grass courts, prompting questions about whether something made them more slippery.

"Very black day," summed up 10th-seeded Marin Cilic, who said a bad left knee forced him to pull out of his match.

One had to wonder what Thursday might bring. The Day 4 schedule featured defending champion Serena Williams, who took a 32-match winning streak into the second round against Caroline Garcia; last year's runner-up, No. 4 Agnieszka Radwanska; 2011 Wimbledon winner Novak Djokovic; and 2009 U.S. Open champion Juan Martin del Potro.

They were to take the court knowing that after three days of the two-week tournament ? merely halfway through the second round ? a total of five of the 10 highest-seeded women were gone, along with four of the top 10 men.

"Bizarre," said 17th-seeded Sloane Stephens of the U.S., who stuck around by winning her match 8-6 in the third set. "I don't know what's going on."

No one did.

One hypothesis making the rounds: The grass is different because there is a new head groundsman at the All England Club, Neil Stubley (keep in mind, though, that he's been helping prepare the courts here for more than 15 years, albeit with a less distinguished title).

Another popular idea was that the recent weather ? it's been in the 60s and humid, but without a drop of rain so far ? is affecting traction.

"I don't know if it's the court or the weather. I can't figure it out," said two-time Australian Open champion Azarenka, who said she bruised a bone in her right leg when she slipped on the turf in her victory Monday and couldn't face Flavia Pennetta on Wednesday. "It would be great if the club or somebody who takes care of the court just would examine or try to find an issue so that wouldn't happen."

Sharapova managed to finish her match, at least, despite losing her footing a few times, but told the chair umpire the conditions were dangerous.

"After I buckled my knee three times, that's obviously my first reaction. And because I've just never fallen that many times in a match before," said the four-time major champion, noting that she thought she might have strained a muscle in her left hip.

"I just noticed a few more players falling a bit more than usual," Sharapova added.

The All England Club took the unusual step of issuing a statement in response to Wednesday's events ? and complaints.

"There has been some suggestion that the court surface is to blame. We have no reason to think this is the case. Indeed, many players have complimented us on the very good condition of the courts," the statement read. "The court preparation has been to exactly the same meticulous standard as in previous years and it is well known that grass surfaces tend to be more lush at the start of an event. The factual evidence, which is independently checked, is that the courts are almost identical to last year, as dry and firm as they should be, and we expect them to continue to play to their usual high quality."

Hours earlier, the club confirmed it had reminded Federer ? and other players ? that rules are rules, so the neon bottoms of his sneakers simply would not be tolerated. He complied, wearing white soles Wednesday, at the tournament only two other men have won as many as seven times (Willie Renshaw, whose titles came in the 1880s, and Pete Sampras).

"Beating Roger here on his court, where he's a legend, is, I think, having definitely a special place in my career," Stakhovsky said.

That's something of an understatement.

Stakhovsky owns a losing record for his career (108-121) and at Grand Slams (12-18) and never has been past the third round at a major tournament. Until Wednesday, he was best known, if at all, for grabbing his cellphone to take a photo of a disputed ball mark in the clay during a first-round loss at the French Open last month.

Federer's consistent brilliance extends beyond Wimbledon, of course: He reached 23 Grand Slam semifinals in a row in one stretch, which also included 10 straight finals.

Not since a third-round loss at the 2004 French Open had Federer failed to reach the quarterfinals at a Grand Slam. That means he'd won 141 consecutive matches in the first through fourth rounds at the Australian Open, French Open, Wimbledon and the U.S. Open (he advanced four times via an opponent's withdrawal).

On Wednesday, though, the third-seeded Federer simply was unable to derail Stakhovsky's serve-and-volley style, breaking the 27-year-old Ukrainian only once.

Still, there actually was a real chance for Federer to get back in the thick of things. Ahead 6-5 in the fourth, he held a set point as Stakhovsky served at 30-40. But Stakhovsky came up with this sequence: volley winner, 111 mph ace, serve-and-volley winner.

"I had my opportunities, had the foot in the door. When I had the chance, I couldn't do it," said Federer, who is 122-18 on grass over his career, while Stakhovsky is 13-12. "It's very frustrating, very disappointing. I'm going to accept it and move forward from here. I have no choice."

In the closing tiebreaker, with spectators roaring after every point, Stakhovsky raced to a 5-2 lead, and the match ended with Federer pushing a backhand wide on a 13-stroke exchange. Stakhovsky dropped to his back, then later bowed to the stadium's four sides. He sat in his sideline chair, purple Wimbledon towel draped over his head, as Federer quickly headed for the locker room. Stakhovsky peeked out and saw Federer leaving, then applauded right along with the fans' standing ovation.

"You're playing the guy and then you're playing his legend," Stakhovsky said. "You're playing two of them. When you're beating one, you still have the other one who is pressing you. You're saying, 'Am I about to beat him? Is it possible?'"

On this wildest of days, it was.

___

Follow Howard Fendrich on Twitter at http://twitter.com/HowardFendrich

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/federer-sharapova-lose-wild-day-wimbledon-075025955.html

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Paying by Phone ? Conveniences and Cautions

It seems like every time I get to the register of a chain store, they offer me a new way to pay with my phone. But these new modes of paying have serious pros and cons ? and there may be compelling reasons not to dive into mobile payments just yet, despite their growth.

Mobile Payments Predicted To Go Up 44% in 2013
Research firm Gartner says over $235 million in payments will be made with mobile devices this year. In retail outlets, those pay-by-phone options break down into three main categories: brand specific apps (like the Starbucks app), payment apps (like PayPal or Square Wallet), and NFC ? Near Field Communications (special phones linked to a Google Wallet or Isis account).

NFC ? Near Field Communication
Let?s start with NFC since it?s gotten all the hot press. This technology is built into certain devices, predominantly Android and Blackberry phones. You link the phone either to a Google Wallet account (tied to your bank or credit card), to an NFC credit card account (like Mastercard PayPass), or to an Isis account (tied to your mobile phone billing), then tap a terminal at the checkout to pay. But these tap-and-go contact-less payments will account for only 2% of all mobile payments in 2013 according to Gartner. Stores with NFC terminals are limited, and only a handful of phones have NFC technology built in (and the iPhone is NOT one of those).

Probably the biggest issue is that NFC is a solution in search of a problem: how difficult is it to swipe a credit card? More explicitly, what does NFC payment do for the consumer?s convenience that swiping a credit card can?t? If NFC terminals were everywhere, maybe it would facilitate leaving home without cash or a credit card, but until then, the technology faces significant inertia, and I wouldn?t buy one phone over another just because it has NFC baked in.

Brand-Specific Apps
Many chains have their own apps that let you input your credit card info and ?load? money on the app for in-store payments. By combining the payment functionality with apps that track purchases and reward loyalty, ?regulars? get a significant convenience and can even frequent their favorite joint without a wallet. Do you go for a run every morning and grab a coffee when you finish? Hello Starbucks app on your phone! uyl_WaysToPay_still_embed

Pre-order/Pre-pay
I particularly like the order ahead and pay by mobile functionality that chains like California Pizza Kitchen App have brought to market. This makes the take-out pizza experience incredibly easy. Order and pay by app, walk in, tell them your name, get your food and walk out in under three minutes. The app even remembers your previous orders so you can replicate them with one click ? genius. Jamba Juice is said to be testing pre-order and pre-pay for their app, and when this is a feature is replicated by more chains, it will bring many loyal customers into the mobile payment world.

Wallet Apps
Paypal and Square wallet are the two biggest players in app-based mobile payments. Stores that offer payment by app either let you key in your mobile phone number and a pin or use location data captured by your phone, in which case the phone will generate a QR code to be scanned at the register. Again, stores need special equipment and merchant accounts. Plus, the major benefits of using Paypal or Square are still limited to people who don?t have a bank account or credit cards and prefer a mobile option.

Money Transfers
While in-store mobile purchases are growing, 71% of all mobile payments are money transfers ? and most often, person-to-person transfers. The clear winner here is Paypal, which lets you email or even text money to anyone?s phone or email address. The recipient needs to have a Paypal account (or sign up for one) but so long as it?s not a business payment, just between individuals, there are no fees.

These types of transfers are ideal for repaying a friend, or sending money to a family member who needs the cash immediately. Some services don?t even need a bank account to work ? good news for the 8% of US households that don?t have bank accounts. Customers can use cash to purchase a PayPal card or Money Pak card in retail outlets, and then use the pin numbers on those cards to deposit money into the Paypal mobile account (but beware: prepaid card purchases can have fees associated).

Text Money From your Online Banking App
Banks like Wells Fargo and Chase now allow you to send money to individuals directly from their phone app. There?s also a brand new mobile phone-based bank called GoBank that, among many other innovative features, lets you send money directly to a friend from your GoBank account.

Send Money via Gmail
Google is also entering the mobile transfer space; they are trying out a product that lets you send money through Gmail, almost like an attachment. Google said in a statement this is only available to users over 18. It?s slowly being rolled out to users in the U.S., and we assume later, internationally.

Person-to-Person Credit Card Payments
PayPal and Square both offer credit card readers that plug into a smart phone and allow anyone to swipe a credit card and accept payment. If you have an account, the readers are free. They make great sense for small business owners, fundraising events, or even collecting money around the office for a baby gift. But the big gotcha here is the roughly 3% that the services charge you to accept money via credit card.

Security
The weakest link in the mobile payment security chain is not the wireless transmission of your data via NFC or the scanning of QR codes from a store?s app. The technology is not the problem; it?s what that technology enables: more corporations may have your credit card and billing info on their servers (hello hacking target). And an even bigger vulnerability: if your phone is stolen, thieves have access to a treasure trove of accounts and payment methods. If you plan to pay with your phone, you?d better have security software enabled, like Lookout for Android or Find My iPhone ? both of which allow you to erase your phone remotely as soon as it?s stolen.

[Related: How To Lock Down Your Cell Phone If It?s Stolen]

Bottom Line: Mobile payments make sense if you don?t have a bank account or credit card, if you frequent a chain that offers mobile payments and reward features, or if you want to transfer money to friends and family in a secure and convenient way. But be sure you know the fees associated with these payments and can remotely erase your phone if it?s stolen.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/upgrade-your-life/paying-phone-conveniences-cautions-141559523.html

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Satellite Communications Come to the Mobile Internet Services

The mobile satellite communications market is experiencing strong growth globally with mobile workers, cargo, and remote applications driving the industry. This diverse market consists of handsets, modems, ships, human passengers, and machine-to-machine (M2M) modules that bring satellite services to a diverse range of applications, further driving rapid traffic growth and bandwidth demand from machines and humans alike.

As a result of this, however, Satellite Communications (SATCOM) service providers are straining to keep up with this tremendous demand and growth. They are challenged to seamlessly integrate with terrestrial networks, and as if this is not enough, much like the similar challenges faced my terrestrial mobile operators, they also need a solid plan for how they will address the data traffic explosion coming onto their networks in the next three to five years.

That is where Cisco Evolved Packet Core Satellite Radio Access Network solution (or EPC SatRAN for those who prefer acronyms) comes into play.? It provides a standards-based approach to integrate satellite networks with terrestrial mobile networks while providing the ability to create feature-rich service models that can be developed once but deployed many times.? With EPC SatRAN, Satellite Operators can:

• Remove complexity from current satellite deployments and increase service velocity
• Reduce OpEx by managing satellite like other wireless access networks
• Utilize Satellite as the ?middle mile?
• Consistently manage the end-to-end network
• Support consumer/broadband and Enterprise Business Class services
• Optimize network services through a unified management layer across HetNet + Satellite by Cisco Prime

Let?s take a look at how one sector ? the maritime industry ? makes use of Cisco?s EPC SatRAN solution.

Vessel owners can monitor ship-tracking data from anywhere, securely; they can monitor and enable emergency crew welfare services in real time; and it enhances the on-board passenger experience through access to mobile data and any relevant content like product ads and games ? enabling vessel owners to generate additional revenues.? All of this can be done without a human ever stepping on board.

That?s because Cisco?s EPC SatRAN solution works behind the scenes, seamlessly connecting the vessel to a land-based point of presence and accessing the nearest terrestrial telecom system in order to analyze data and make necessary decisions, much like small cells do with macrocell networks today.

This solution brings together:

• A new Cisco Elastic Evolved Packet Core (EPC) Systems Release ? a validated design providing network intelligence for controlling and managing mobile SatRAN traffic;
• The Cisco ASR 5000 Series ? enabling a trusted non-3GPP radio access network for existing or new GEO/MEO/LEO based satellite systems, working closely with?
• The Cisco Quantum Policy Suite ? to enable innovative mobile Internet services, superior quality of experience, and to bring new levels of network efficiency when used with context-aware analytics for monetization.

Cisco?s SatRAN-oriented architecture even helps Communications Service Providers and Satellite Operators offer multi-tenant cloud-based services, such as Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and Platform as a Service (PaaS), to not only make this solution applicable to the mobile internet but to the cloud as well.

Whether it is bringing together different access types or technologies or even land and sea, the network is connecting them all and helping to bring the Internet of Everything into reality.

Happy (and connected) sailing.

To learn more, please visit Cisco EPC SatRAN solution.

Tags: mobile internet, satellite communications, satran, Service Provider

Source: http://blogs.cisco.com/sp/satellite-communications-come-to-the-mobile-internet-services/

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Driver of bus that hit Mass. house was new to job

AUBURN, Mass. (AP) ? The man driving a regional transit bus that crashed into a house in central Massachusetts earlier this week was on his first day of service.

The Telegram & Gazette reports (http://bit.ly/1227YGh) that the driver of the bus was 27-year-old Francis Artey of Worcester (WUS'-tur).

Worcester Regional Transit Authority official John Carney says Artey went through a rigorous, eight-week training program before "driving in service" for the first time Monday. Carney says Artey was an experienced school bus driver with a stellar driving record.

Police say it appears the brakes weren't applied before the bus smashed into the house in Auburn. They say Artey may have had a medical problem, or there may have been a mechanical problem with the bus.

The crash remains under investigation. Artey was hospitalized with fractures and cuts. No other serious injuries were reported.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/driver-bus-hit-mass-house-job-111859560.html

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Patriots Tight End Aaron Hernandez Charged With Murder! (VIDEO)

Patriots Tight End Aaron Hernandez Charged With Murder! (VIDEO)

New England Patriots football player Aaron Hernandez was dropped from the NFL team just after he was arrested by police at his home and taken away in handcuffs. Hernandez had been charged with murder in the death of Odin Lloyd, who was found less than a mile from the football player’s North Attleborough, Massachusetts home. ...

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Source: http://stupidcelebrities.net/2013/06/patriots-tight-end-aaron-hernandez-arrested-dropped-from-team-video/

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The Benefits of Internet Radio - TechSling

The advantages of using a wireless Internet radio receiver as opposed to a traditional terrestrial as well as land based receiver tends to be quite many these days. Together with Internet radio players you?re no more tied to just the stations that are offered in your local area, but channels obtainable all over the world. There are actually completely new channels arriving online daily. The only factor you need to make the most of this kind of variety is an Internet radio tuner. This can be a stand alone receiver, a computer, a television or perhaps only a smartphone.

A number of services such as Pandora, iHeart radio, iTunes and even Freeview Radio through Digital TV providers such as BT Vision?possess a great deal of channels to choose from. Also available are streaming stations from individual radio stations and also private individuals. With a lot of options to get songs from comes a limitless choice in genres too. Everything from individual decades such as the 80?s to a particular kind of music including live jazz performances. Anything you like to listen to can be found with an Internet radio player.

Other features of Internet radio consist of having the ability to obtain more information about what you might be hearing than is possible with conventional radios. The majority of streams of music usually include information regarding the song you happen to be listening to. Details such as the name of the song, name of the performer and also the name of the album can be found quite easily. Furthermore, more and more services tend to be supplying the ability to buy the song you?re listening to straight from the stream you?re hearing it on.

With regular radio stations there might be difficulties with range from the station creating bad sound quality. This is not the case with Internet radio players. So long as the Internet speed and also wireless signal is adequate the quality of sound gets close to that of a CD. This can be essential when you are listening to radio stations that often go out during storms. With online stations as long as your Internet is up you will have music and songs.

Another advantage of listening to music on the Internet is the lack of long blocks of ads. While there tend to be costs associated with offering music online, the cost is significantly less than that of a land based radio station. Additionally in contrast to conventional radio stations, online radio has much less and sometimes absolutely no limitations on it. This allows for less censoring and more independence to perform tracks that could not make it past regulators on a standard radio station.

Every one of these benefits soon add up to a lot more independence and much larger spectrum of available songs to people hearing with a wired or even wireless Internet radio receiver. With a good pair of audio speakers and Internet speed to deal with the stream, playing music online can be a lot more enjoyable and satisfying than being tied to a radio station that?s close enough to reach your typical radio antenna.

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Source: http://www.techsling.com/2013/06/the-benefits-of-internet-radio/

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Cyclorama marks 150th anniversary of Gettysburg

GETTYSBURG, Pa. (AP) ? Standing in the middle of the gruesome battle scene during Pickett's Charge, surrounded by the horrific sight of 12,000 infantrymen fighting, bloodied, mangled and dying, some of the most hardened soldiers were brought to tears.

But that was two decades after the decisive 1863 battle. The soldiers described in newspaper accounts as being overcome with emotion were Civil War veterans looking at a massive in-the-round painting, known as a cyclorama, a grand illusion recreating the pivotal battle with a level of realism not seen before.

"They were the IMAX of their day," said Katie Lawhon, spokeswoman for Gettysburg National Military Park. The National Park Service has owned the cyclorama since 1942.

Visitors coming for the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg will experience the four-story cyclorama, one of only three known to survive in the U.S., fully restored in a new visitor center with a dramatic light and sound show.

As much novelty as fine art, cycloramas commonly depicted military or religious scenes and were displayed in purpose-made buildings.

Hung inside a rotunda, a properly installed cyclorama creates an immersive 360-degree experience thanks to its colossal size and meticulous details. A diorama in front of the canvas adds to the effect by extending the scene in 3-D.

French artist Paul Philippoteaux and a team of 20 painters created four identical Gettysburg cycloramas in all, based on his sketches and photos of the landscape, historical accounts and interviews with Pickett's Charge survivors. They were so popular that a number of Philippoteaux knockoffs started making the state fair rounds.

"When Paul Philippoteaux is finished with the paintings and lays everyone off, those master drawings get out there and other competing companies acquired the artist and drawing," said Sue Boardman, program manager with the Gettysburg Foundation and a cyclorama expert.

Philippoteaux signed his work by adding his likeness, leaning against a tree in a Union uniform, as soldiers around him charge the front line. The work was otherwise politically neutral: Whether Union or Confederate, all Philippoteaux's soldiers fight heroically and die with honor.

"He would tinker with it if someone who was there told him a detail that wasn't right," Lawhon said. "He continued to make changes after it was completed."

Motion pictures killed the cyclorama craze, and they began to quickly vanish by the late 1800s. The only other one still on display depicts the Battle of Atlanta and resides in that city.

Gettysburg's cyclorama was originally displayed in Boston, then spent a decade languishing boxed in an open shed that a Boston newspaper colorfully mourned as a "mausoleum of greatness." It was purchased by a retail mogul, who chopped it up for display, and eventually arrived in its current hometown exactly a century ago, already the worse for wear.

Time was also not any kinder in the decades that followed. By the 1990s, it "was so aesthetically compromised that ... the illusion it was once capable of creating could only be read in century-old accounts," Boardman said.

A five-year, $15 million upgrade completed in 2008 repaired deterioration from heat, moisture, pollution, neglect and ill-advised repair attempts. The cyclorama's former 1960s dwelling by modernist architect Richard Neutra wasn't as lucky: It was demolished this winter after preservationists lost a lengthy court battle.

Conservators separated the painting's 27 panels and cleaned each one inch by inch with cotton swabs, stabilized brittle areas and removed bad touchups and damaging glue. A missing 14-foot vertical section and a 12-foot horizontal slice of sky were replaced.

"The colors are very vivid," Lawhon said. "We have to remind visitors that it's from 1884 because it doesn't look it."

Visual tricks like an elevated viewing platform heighten the perception of being in the action. Restorers rehung the canvas so the center bows inward as originally intended, and they reconstructed a long-absent diorama of trees, fences, stone walls and a cannon, Lawhon said.

"When it's stretched correctly, it's best for the canvas, and it's best for the eye when you're at the horizon level," she said. "It had been hung incorrectly for decades and it's much more dramatic. People who haven't seen it in a while will be surprised."

___

Online:

Cyclorama: http://1.usa.gov/11LTdra

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/cyclorama-marks-150th-anniversary-gettysburg-143128999.html

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IE 11 on Windows 8.1 preview supports HTML5 Netflix streaming right now

Netflix recently detailed some of the technological developments needed to transition from Silverlight to HTML5 streaming video in the browser, and in a notable turn one of the first companies on board is Microsoft. It's not that surprising since Microsoft has made it clear it's pushing other technologies going forward, but it's still a stark example of how much things have changed in recent years. Netflix's Tech Blog announced today that anyone running Internet Explorer 11 in the Windows 8.1 preview can visit Netflix.com today and try out HTML5-powered video streaming right now. Already available on ARM Chromebooks (pictured above), Netflix says Microsoft has implemented the Premium video extensions it's been working on to provide support for GPU-accelerated 1080p video, DRM and encryption without proprietary plugins.

Filed under: Home Entertainment, Internet, HD, Microsoft

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Source: Netflix Tech Blog

Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/acDSxcTdCAc/

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Adrien Brody, Jordana Brewster join 'American Heist'

By Jeff Sneider

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) - Oscar winner Adrien Brody, "Fast and Furious" star Jordana Brewster and rapper Akon will join Hayden Christensen in the action-thriller "American Heist."

"American Heist" is the first feature from Christensen's newly-formed production company Glacier Films, which has financing in place and plans to produce 11 movies over the next three years.

Sarik Andreasyan will direct "American Heist," which is a remake of the 1959 Steve McQueen movie "St. Louis Bank Robbery."

Story follows two brothers with checkered pasts who get involved in an ill-fated bank robbery spearheaded by a gang of dangerous criminals. The heist tests the strength of their sibling bond and how far they will go for family.

Tove Christensen, Gevond Andreasyan, Georgy Malkov and Vladimir Poliakov are producing, while Christensen and Brody will executive produce with Joseph Nasser and Jack Nasser of Nasser Entertainment Group and Jojo Ryder.

Glacier Films is financing with Warren T. Goz. Production starts today. Paradigm is repping domestic distribution rights, while Voltage is handling international sales.

Paradigm reps Brody and Akon, while CAA reps Brewster.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/adrien-brody-jordana-brewster-join-american-heist-203422687.html

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